Radio Days (Part IV): A Homecoming of Sorts and "Grandma, Can I Have a CD Player?

With the decade of the 1980s progressing into its latter half, the twists and turns of my radio career landed me in my home state of Missouri, much to my delight. The setting for the new job was in a rural, small-town located in the northern part of the state quite close to the Iowa border. The following is the fourth in a series of essays about my life as a broadcaster. Time Frame: 1985-1986.

With two seemingly long years in northwest Oklahoma working at KSIW under my belt, my desire to move on was growing increasingly more intense. I had sent out many audition tapes containing what I thought was my best work. These cassette tapes contained an air check of a recent shift and samples of some of my commercial production. (I was fortunate that management had relaxed recently its policy against allowing jocks to do production or to even say their names on air.)

At last, I got the break I wanted. After finishing an afternoon airshift, I came home to find a blinking red light and a surprising message on my answering machine. (Remember, this was 1985.)

I pushed 'playback', and I heard a pleasant-sounding woman's voice. She identified herself as Carla Robinson, the Program Director for KRXL-FM (XL-94) in Kirksville, Missouri. She said that she had just listened to my tape and was interested in talking to me about doing 'afternoon drive' there. When I returned her call, I scheduled an interview. About a week or so after our initial meeting, I was delighted to learn that I had landed the gig. Apparently, the interview had gone well, and I was ecstatic.

I was doing afternoon drive at a regional powerhouse in my home state of Missouri. (At left, my Mom and I were checking out the 'Radio Park' building that housed both KRXL and companion station, KIRX-AM. Both she and my Dad, who shot the photo, came to visit me at the station during my employment there.) At the time, 'XL-94' as it was called, was a 100,000-watt, Adult-Contemporary FM station that that covered the entire northeast quarter of Missouri (and much southeast Iowa, as well). The stations were in the hands of Vera Burk, an elderly and kindly widow who was left in charge after her husband, the founder of KRXL-KIRX, had died in 1982.

Vera's grandson, 'Burk' Forsythe, was XL-94's weekend and fill-in jock who for all intents and purposes called virtually all the shots at the station despite the fact, as I mentioned above, that Carla Robinson was in name, the PD. Carla, however, did render the personnel decisions since she recruited, interviewed, and hired me. But Burk, because of his family relationship, made most the other decisions.

Burk wasn't really that great of an air personality, but he was unquestionably an audiophile. And, I think his pull with Grandma Vera was essentially the reason why XL-94, a small market radio station in rural Missouri, had a CD player in September, 1985, a time when the overwhelming majority of commercial radio stations didn't. (Our unit look looked a lot like the one pictured on the left.) Unfortunately, players of the time weren't designed to withstand repeated usage as broadcasting situations require. Ours was no exception, and after some two months of use, our player couldn't play a CD without it skipping. Much to Burk's dismay, Grandma Vera said no to a new one. And thus, XL-94 was relegated to using cart players and turntables for the remainder of my time spent working there.

Along with the dawn of new digital recording technology, 1985 and 1986 was a momentous time for both news and pop music. I'll never forget how on the afternoon of January 28,1986, I came into my shift during which we were airing continuous wall-to-wall coverage of the horrific Space Shuttle Challenger disaster:

I remember that it was a difficult segue for me when I had to go back to playing music later that afternoon.

Also during my stint at XL-94, a HUGE sports story, at least for Missourians, occurred. The national media had dubbed it, 'The I-70 World Series'. Because of its geographic location, Kirksville seemed to be divided equally between Cardinals and Royals fans rabidly routing for their respective teams. For the record, the folks at KRXL-KIRX were decidedly pro-St. Louis since KIRX was a Cardinal network affiliate.

Musically, the pop songs we played at XL-94 were mostly synthesized, rhythmic dance tunes that all came accompanying videos that got extensive play on either MTV or VH-1. (Yes, this was the time when MTV actually played music!) While officially Adult Contemporary, XL-94 strayed heavily into Top-40 or CHR music. Billboard magazine had St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)" by John Parr listed at Number One my first week in Kirksville , and XL-94 had it in heavy rotation.

I also remember these tunes during my time there.

For the most part, it was a great time for pop music, and a great time for being in radio. I look back at my time at XL-94 as a rewarding experience where I got to refine my broadcasting skills and work with a pretty decent group of people.

Unfortunately, my job came to sudden end under less than ideal circumstances. It seems that I made the bad move of recording an air-check over an 'unmarked' sales demo tape I found in the production studio without asking if it was okay. As it turned out, this tape belonged to the sales manager, and after one thing led to another, I was shown the door.

Coming up: Rock Radio and 'Lock It In and Rip the Knob Off' in Indiana...